


Rose and the Master

by Hawkerin



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Telepathic Bond, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-02 22:01:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15805416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkerin/pseuds/Hawkerin
Summary: Rose makes it back to her original universe during the year that never was and is captured by the Master.  Despite the joy of finding each other again, the Doctor and Rose will have to endure a lot before they get the happily ever after that they've been dreaming of.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was difficult to write for me. I've never really done anything this dark before. I'm more known for my fluff and smut. There's a bit of fluff mixed in here, but it is very, very dark. The story is complete, but I'll be posting it one chapter at a time.

Twenty seven days, three hours, 7 minutes.  It would be a long year, that’s for sure. Martha was relatively safe, down on Earth.  Jack was being repeatedly tortured and killed for the Master’s amusement. And he was stuck on the bridge of the Valiant, physically aged, and so far unable to get through to the Master why this plan needed to stop.  Would it work? Maybe, for a while, but for the billions of years that the Toclafane were dreaming of? Not likely. Somewhere along the way, the paradox machine would fail and the whole universe would likely be destroyed.  It didn’t take him long to figure out just what the spheres were after overhearing a few conversations between them and the Master. And yes, it broke his hearts. But he would put a stop to all of this. Eventually.

 

The Doctor was startled from his thoughts by the arrival of the Master and the sounds of the guards dragging a struggling prisoner.  He wondered who they’d found this time to taunt him with. Perhaps Sarah Jane or something. The Master knew many of his former companions and might look for them on Earth just to … wait, it couldn’t be.

 

Two men dragged the petite, blonde woman into the room as she kicked at them and shouted for them to let her go and give something back.  The Doctor just stared with wide eyes and a slack jaw at the woman he knew that he would never see again. How could she be here? Why now? Why NOW??  

 

“Ah, you clearly recognize her,” the Master said with a smile.  “But does she recognize you? After all, you were quite young and dashing looking when she saw you last, weren’t you?”

 

“What are you-?” Rose shouted before catching sight of the aged man sitting on the floor.  She clearly knew his suit, but it was when her eyes met his that he was sure she could see who he was.  “Doctor?”

 

“Oh, how sweet.  A little reunion,” the Master said.

 

The Doctor scrambled to get up and reach her, but the Master easily kicked him back into the corner, then turned to address the new arrival.

 

“Caught just as you materialized on board this ship.  Carrying a rather crude teleport of some kind. But you, Rose Tyler, are supposed to be trapped in another universe.”

 

“How could you know that? Who are you? What have you done to him?” she asked, struggling against the men holding her again.

 

“Well, let’s see.  You will call me the Master.  I’ve been here waiting for just the right time since before he lost you.  I might have had a tiny bit of influence in that Torchwood nonsense. Or at least I didn’t stop their idiotic experiments.  The security footage was quite dramatic. As for what I’ve done to him? I’m allowing him to watch as I take over the universe.”

 

“What you want me for, then?” Rose questioned.

 

The Master smiled evilly at her, then glanced at the fearful look on the Doctor’s face.  In those first weeks of captivity, the Master had used his considerable mental skills to break into the Doctor’s mind, trying to discover his plan.  The Doctor had managed to conceal the plan he had for stopping him and reversing the whole thing by using the Archangel network and destroying the Paradox machine inside his TARDIS.  But in concealing that, he had allowed the Master to access his most precious memories. He had seen what the Doctor felt for Rose, how precious she was.

 

“You very conveniently have fallen right into my grasp.  Not only very important to him, but you’ve brought me something that will travel between universes, and you’ve swallowed the Time Vortex.  The experiments I’d love to perform on you,” the Master explained with a sneer.

 

“Don’t! Please, Master, don’t hurt her.  I’ll do anything, just let Rose go. Please!” the Doctor begged.

 

“Lock her up with the freak for now.  I have some equipment to prepare,” the Master ordered and the guards dragged her out of the room.

 

Panic.  That’s all the Doctor could feel.  His hearts were nearly beating out of his chest as he considered what the Master might do to her.  He needed some kind of plan to save her. If he got her off of the Valiant before reversing the year, would she make it back again? If he kept her here, how could he keep the Master from destroying her body and her mind?  Advanced medicine and nanogenes aside, the Master could break into her mind and convince her to hate him. Or leave her as nothing more than a vegetable, barely alive. He wasn’t sure which would be worse. He had to find a way to reach her physically before any of that could happen.  He could set up barriers to protect her. Well, maybe protect her. There was one sure fire way, but he couldn’t do that.

 

It was hours before anything happened and the Doctor became more and more convinced that the Master might spend days just letting him wonder what was being done to Rose.  But then it became painfully clear that he didn’t want the Doctor to miss one moment of her agony in person. A metal table with restraints attached to it was brought onto the bridge of the Valiant, along with a locked, glass case full of gruesome looking equipment.  It was clear that the Master’s planned torture was going to be psychological, as well as physical for Rose and the Doctor.

 

He spent another few hours staring at the equipment that would soon hold his dearest friend before the Master returned with the guards dragging Rose with them. There was evidence that she had been crying as her face was smeared with makeup and blotchy from tears.

 

“Why did you do that?! Doctor, he killed Jack!” Rose shouted.

 

“I know, Rose.  I know,” he tried to say something to reassure her, but knew the Master would steal the explanation and twist it.

 

“Oh, what fun.  It’s your fault, you know.  Your fault that it’s so much fun anyway.  I can kill him over and over again and he just keeps coming back,” the Master laughed.

 

“What?” she gasped.

 

“Take off her clothes.  They’ll just be in the way,” the Master ordered and the guards smirked as they stripped Rose before securing her in the restraints.

 

The Doctor seethed as he watched the two men handling her.  Touching her roughly as they did their jobs and taking perverse pleasure in being able to do so.  Rose tried to keep her expression defiant and angry rather than fearful, but he could tell that she knew just how vulnerable she was now.  They were both crushingly aware of just how bad this was likely to be.

 

The guards moved to stand by the door once Rose was secured and without saying a word, as he usually would, the Master set up a scanning device.  He waved the device over Rose a few times and mumbled to himself in what the Doctor could tell was Gallifreyan, but couldn’t distinguish exactly what he was saying. The screen was also turned away from him, so there wasn’t even a way to see what exactly the Master was looking at as he typed furiously into the device analysing the results.  Thankfully, this test seemed to be non-invasive, but he was sure that further ‘experiments’ wouldn’t be so benign.

 

“You didn’t even know,” the Master finally said as he looked contemplatively at the Doctor.

 

“Didn’t know what?” he sighed.  This was when his nemesis would gloat and taunt him with things that he could never have.

 

“I’ve been inside your head.  You never knew what she did. Oh, Doctor,” he chuckled.  “And now it’s too late. She’s mine and you’ll never have her.”

 

“What do you mean, what I did?” Rose demanded angrily.

 

The Master turned to speak to her directly, hovering over her restrained form intimidatingly.  The Doctor had an inkling that what he was about to tell her should have been something wonderful, but would be twisted in such a way as to make her feel guilty.

 

“Absorbing the Time Vortex in your clingy little stunt to get back to him.  You forced him to regenerate, you doomed your dear friend Jack to an eternity of dying over and over again but never having peace, and you made some rather drastic changes to yourself as well. Twisted your pathetic human genome into something else entirely. I’ll need to conduct further tests to see just how far those changes go, but I daresay that you were trying to keep our dear Doctor company for a bit longer than his usual little pets,” the Master told her.

 

“If I had the chance to stay with him, of course I would,” she countered.

 

“Well, I have a number of hypotheses to test now,” the Master responded with a smirk.  “I think the first will be just how quickly you heal from injuries.”

 

As he moved to retrieve several instruments from the glass case, the Doctor and Rose’s eyes met, sharing a look of horror.  Looking into Rose’s eyes, he could see the tears start to form though they didn’t fall yet. The Doctor hoped that she could see how much he wanted to save her from this madness.  He knew, however, that any pleading for mercy on his part would only be met with laughter and satisfaction from his long-time rival.

 

Rose began to panic as she saw the scalpels and clamps that were splayed across the tray that the Master set next to her.  With a maniacal grin, he dragged the knife slowly across the skin of her abdomen, directly above her navel. She screamed for him to stop, but tried to hold herself still lest the tool cut deeper or more roughly.

 

The Doctor couldn’t bare to watch any longer, clenching his eyes shut, tears streamed down his cheeks at her continued shrieks of pain.  He ached to run to her side and stop this somehow, but in his current state and with the Master’s obvious advantages in weapons and manpower, he would only endanger Rose more.  So, he sat silently on the floor and cried for her.

 

“Precisely what I was hoping for,” the Master cheered, prompting the Doctor to look at what was happening.

 

“What?!” he gasped.  Rose’s skin looked perfect.  While the scalpel was covered in blood, there was not a drop of it on her, nor were there any cuts to be seen. The table on which she was lying, however, was covered in a pool of blood.

 

“This should prove to be even more fun than killing Jack,” the Master giggled excitedly.

 

“What happened?” the Doctor demanded.

 

“Aw, you didn’t see it?  I guess I’ll just have to do it again.  Probably best to wait until she wakes up though,” he sighed and tossed the knife back onto the tray before strolling out of the room.  “Don’t let him touch her,” he muttered over his shoulder at the guards.

 

Rose lay unconscious on the table.  Her face was streaked with tears, but she appeared to be completely unharmed by the bloody tools that lay nearby.  He hadn’t watched the full extent of damage that had been done to her, but could tell that it had been more than a small incision.  Glancing up at the guards, he knew that they would react if he tried to touch her at all, so he turned to look at the scanner the Master had been studying earlier.

 

He dare not touch the machine either.  He was sure that they would stop him, but he couldn’t help wondering at what was currently displayed.  It was radiation levels. Something in one of his earlier scans must have made him curious about this, but it didn’t really tell the Doctor much.  There was an obvious spike in residual Void particles from her jumping back to this universe (and he needed to know more about that too), higher than normal levels of Artron radiation for a human, and what looked like Huon particles.  That was definitely odd and certainly from her exposure to the heart of the TARDIS. The question being, if she wasn’t dying from Huon radiation, then what was it doing to her? It unravelled molecular structures and so was very dangerous to experiment with.  They had travelled together for over a year after his regeneration and he didn’t know how long it had been for her since their separation, but she certainly didn’t seem to be suffering from any dangerous mutations.

 

The Doctor was startled from his thoughts by the voice of their tormentor directly behind him.

 

“Figure it out yet?” he asked.

 

“Not from only this, as I’m sure you know.  What’s happened to her? You know exactly what is changed in her physiology, but you want to torture her to prove your superiority,” the Doctor growled.

 

“You’ve seen nothing yet.  I think that last experiment was a bit too small.  Time to push her limits a bit.”

 

“Please, don’t do this to her.  You can hurt me all you want, but please don’t do this to Rose,” he begged, knowing that it wouldn’t help but needing to offer himself in her place.

 

“As much as your pain would hurt her to watch as well, I have legitimate experiments that need to be run on her.  I already know what you’re all about. Time to wake up, little wolf,” the Master replied, smacking Rose harshly across the face.

 

She groaned groggily before taking in her surroundings and watching the Master fearfully.  Rose looked down at herself and asked, “Why did you heal me up from that?”

 

“I think we’ll go more slowly this time, rather than the more fatal types of injuries.”

 

“No, please! Not again! Doctor!” Rose shouted.

 

“Master, don’t do this! You can do anything to me, I don’t care, but please let her go,” the Doctor told him, kneeling on the ground at his feet.

 

With a nod to the guards nearby, he ordered, “Hold him back.  She’s not going to like this at all.”

 

The Master made several small, deep incisions in Rose’s flesh, in various locations.  Her blood flowed in deep red rivers across her pale skin and pooled on the table beneath her.  Rose sobbed and begged incoherently as the Doctor wrestled with the men holding him back from the woman he loved.  It was clear that the Master was waiting for something to happen as he watched Rose carefully before moving on to the next wound he would inflict.  Rose’s body began to shake uncontrollably and the Master stepped back, merely observing what would happen. Her spasms continued as she urinated, her system no longer in control of itself, and just as she lost consciousness again, a bright golden light shone from each of her wounds.  It was nearly blinding, but when the light faded, her skin was completely intact once again.

 

“Ugh. Disgusting,” the Master sneered.  “Get a bucket of water. I’ll allow you the duty of cleaning her up, Doctor.  She’s your pet after all.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

One of the guards followed the Master out of the room, leaving the Doctor to stare disbelievingly at his unconscious friend.  What the hell was that? It was almost like regeneration energy, but she clearly didn’t regenerate. Could she? He was sure that would be one of the later experiments, but not one that he planned to hang around for.  A few minutes later, the man returned with a bucket of soapy water and a cloth. He placed it next to Rose and nodded to the Doctor that he was to clean up the mess of blood and urine covering the table and dripping onto the floor.

 

Starting with her face, he wiped the smears of makeup and tears gently away, discreetly pressing his fingers against her temple just long enough to make a connection between his mind and hers.  Once established, he was able to continue cleaning her without maintaining that physical connection. He could feel her mind struggling to wake up, but he sent soothing thoughts her way as he continued his work, hoping to manage a silent conversation with her before the others knew she was awake again.  There was only so much that he could do with Rose securely restrained, but despite asking if he could move her, the response was a firm negative.

 

When he had done the best he could for the moment, the Doctor knelt next to the table and held her hand.  He stared at her face as he concentrated on what he could feel from her mind, ignoring her nakedness as she had not chosen to gift him with the view of her body.

 

_ “What?” Rose thought with a start as she felt something very strange. _

 

_ “It’s me, Rose.  It’s the Doctor. He’s gone for now, but I managed to set up a temporary telepathic link between us so we can talk privately,” he assured her. _

 

_ “What has he done to you? Who is he?” she asked, hoping to finally get a few answers to what was going on here. _

 

_ “The Master is another Time Lord.  He hid himself away from the war at the end of the universe.  I’ll explain more about his plan later, but suffice to say that he’s taken over the Earth.  He made a setting on his laser screwdriver to physically age me, so I’m physically no threat right now.  I have a plan, but for the moment, I’m working on a new one that will get you out of danger much faster.” _

 

_ “I’m not leaving you,” she insisted. _

 

_ “Rose, he will kill you.  The physical pain is only the start, his telepathic abilities are beyond almost any Time Lord’s.  He broke through my defenses easily. I can try to set up some barriers for you, it might help for now.  I can bolster your mind with my own.” _

 

_ “Why does he keep healing me after all that?  I’m not even sore like after you used the dermal regenerator on the TARDIS,” she wondered. _

 

_ “He didn’t heal you, Rose.  Whatever changes happened from Bad Wolf are causing you to heal yourself, but you keep passing out when it happens.  He’s going to keep going, more and more until you can’t heal yourself anymore and I’ll really lose you forever,” he told her. _

 

_ “Is there a way for both of us to escape? I mean it, I’m not leaving without you, Doctor.” _

 

_ “I have to stay here.  It’s part of the plan to reverse all of this,” he sighed, wishing that he could just send her to safety and continue without worrying about her. He could feel her swirling emotions.  Fear, protectiveness for him, he could tell she was glad to have finally found him, but of course she wished that they had a better reunion. He worried a bit that she might be able to feel his thoughts as well. _

 

_ “There’s something more.  Another way to protect me,” Rose realized.  “You aren’t sure that setting up your barriers will stop him and there’s something that you are sure will, but you won’t tell me.  What is it, Doctor?” _

 

_ He could feel her mentally pressing against the veil he had placed over that possibility.  There were so many reasons why he was avoiding that plan. Not because he didn’t want it. Oh, there was nothing that he wanted more, but because it was permanent and intimate and he didn’t deserve it. _

 

_ “Tell me,” she insisted.  “Please, Doctor. If it will protect me from him, even a little, I’ll do anything.” _

 

_ “You don’t understand.  Telepathic species can create a permanent bond between their minds.  It can’t be penetrated or broken by another telepath. It would keep him out of both of our minds, yes, but-” _

 

_ “You don’t want to,” she interrupted sadly. _

 

_ “No! Rose, there’s nothing I would treasure more than that with you, but it’s forever and we would hear each other’s thoughts all the time.  And, well, Rose it would make you my wife for all intents and purposes,” he admitted. _

 

_ “Doctor,” she whispered, nudging him mentally to look at her.  “Do you think I threw myself blindly across the void to find you for a chat?  I love you. I’ve loved you from nearly the beginning and promised to spend my forever with you.  Is there anything about that to imply that I wouldn’t want to be your wife?” _

 

_ “But-” he thought to her but was forced to go back to his corner on the floor when the Master returned. _

 

“Primitive as this device is, it does have a rather ingenious way of crossing universal barriers,” he announced as he sat at the large conference table with some piece of technology that he was examining and kicked his feet up onto the table.  “Did any other humans try it out with you? I’ll bet they found it a bit rough.”

 

Rose remained silent.  The Doctor wasn’t sure if her stubborn refusal to answer his questions would be a good thing or not.  It was harder to maintain the link with her from the other side of the room and he didn’t want to risk the Master realizing what he’d done.  Rose wasn’t practiced at holding a telepathic conversation and he might notice something was off if she tried. The sun had set outside the windows of the airship a while ago and with everything that had happened, Rose had to be beyond exhausted.

 

“Nothing to say? I suppose I could find a few humans to try it out on myself,” the Master suggested.

 

“No!” Rose shouted, worried about him hurting anyone else just because of her. “It made everyone else sick.  I was the only one that wasn’t affected by it and we couldn’t control where we ended up, so it was dangerous to be disoriented.”

 

“Hmm.  Dangerous no matter what, as proved by your current situation,” he mumbled as he fiddled with the wires inside the device he’d torn apart.  “I am curious though, how the demolecularization process affects your cells. I should probably do some scans, teleport you around a bit and see what changes I can document.  I also want to recheck your radiation levels after those earlier reactions. Need to see if it’s lower now or if it renews itself at all.”

 

Rose’s gaze met the Doctor’s as the Master listed some of the tests he planned for her.  Neither of them said anything, just contemplated how dangerous these might be. At the moment, none of it sounded too painful but both of them knew the torture would continue as well.

 

_ “Protect me, Doctor. Please,” she thought to him, seemingly unsure if he would still hear her. _

 

_ “Shh. I’ll do my best, Rose, but be careful with this in case he notices,” he warned. _

 

“She’s your pet, Doctor.  It will be your responsibility to feed and clean her,” the Master told him.

 

“Can’t you let her up from there? She could -”

 

“No,” he replied bluntly.  “Get some food for them. I’ll be back later.”

 

The Master left, still playing with the wires of Rose’s teleportation device.

 

_ “Can you do it now? Make that link thing that will keep him out of our heads?” she begged and he tried not to show his shock at the statement. _

 

_ “But - what? Now? I told you, it would be… it would make you…” _

 

_ “It would make me your wife, yes, I got that.  And I told you, I want that. I get that there’s usually some time thinking about and planning that kind of thing, but he could decide to go inside my head any minute.  I doubt he’s going to give us any warning about it. If it means you can protect me better, then, please do it, Doctor.” _

 

_ “Oh, Rose.  I’ll have to do it slowly.  It will take a few days probably to fully complete the bond between us. And we’ll have to be in physical contact while I work on it, but thankfully he’s allowing me to be the one taking care of you,” he told her, feeling a sudden wave of embarrassment from her. _

 

_ “I’m sorry,” she thought, but seemed embarrassed even to apologize about anything. _

 

_ “What? Why would you be sorry?  Rose, I’d rather be the one doing those things for you than the apes guarding the door.  When I saw them handling you before, I wanted to hurt them terribly for disrespecting you like that,” he insisted. _

 

_ “He’s not going to let me go to the washroom.  I don’t want you to have to…” _

 

_ “It’s alright, love.  I’ll be as gentle and careful as I can, I promise.  Anything for you,” he assured her, sending her his feelings of love and wish to take care of her in any way she needed. _

 

The Doctor was brought two small bowls full of unrecognizable mush.  He’d been eating it for some time now and decided that it seemed to be enough to keep them alive, if not particularly healthy, but it tasted disgustingly bland.  He fed Rose first, working on the bond between them while he did, never knowing when he would be physically forced away from her side.

 

He considered the down sides to having this connection to her during their ordeal.  He didn’t mention them to her because she might try to protect him rather than herself.  The Doctor knew that he would feel every bit of her pain from now on. Anything the Master did to hurt her, would not just hurt mentally, but physically as well.  He could handle a lot, but how long would it be before the Master realized what he’d done? It would be worth it to know that he couldn’t break into their minds. Forming the bond was going much faster than he expected which he guessed probably had to do with the changes she had gone through.  It was almost like he was connecting to another telepath.

 

_ “Whatever you’re doing, Doctor, feels really nice.” _

 

_ “I’m working on our bond.  Just out of curiosity, could you try reaching for my mind and holding on as tight as you can?” he asked, testing his theory. _

 

_ “I feel like I never want to let go,” she sighed. _

 

_ “Rose, I think one of your changes has been to make you telepathic. You shouldn’t have that kind of control as a human.  It’s going to make this all go much faster than I originally thought,” he told her as he worked to pull their minds ever closer. _

 

The couple was startled out of their tiny bubble of happiness by the Master’s return.  He pulled the Doctor back to the area where there was a little tent on the floor and handcuffed him to the nearby stair railing.  The Doctor looked back at Rose in fear of what would be done to her next. Their bond wasn’t quite complete, but almost, so he prepared himself to hide the pain from whatever was done to her next.

 

“Good news, I think I’ve found a way to replicate the effects of teleporting you with this thing without the actual risk of losing you by moving you around.  I might have to build a little cage for you instead of chaining you up like this, but I can’t have you running away now can I?” the Master told her.

 

“Wouldn’t get any complaints about it from me,” she responded.

 

“In the meantime, let’s see what we can find out about this energy that’s wound itself around your genome,” he said as he started scanning her again.  

 

He began mumbling to himself in Gallifreyan again as he looked at the results.  The Doctor strained to hear him and gathered that while the levels were lower than they had been before healing herself, they seemed to be rising again.  That was good for her continued survival, but the Doctor knew that meant he wouldn’t hold back as much out of fear of killing her too quickly. The last thing the Doctor heard him say had him instantly trying to pull himself free of the handcuffs.

 

“Don’t! Please, Master, don’t!” he shouted desperately.

 

“Ah, heard that did you? I won’t drain all of it.  That would end my experiments rather prematurely. I just want to see if I can pull the artron from her to be used as a power source,” the Master replied casually.

 

Rose’s eyes widened in fear.  She shook her head desperately as the Master tried to place a device over her, connected to his scanner.  The motion only earned her a hard smack across the face before it was secured under her chin, several hard, metal probes pressing into her scalp.  The Doctor winced when he hit her, but no one was paying any attention to him at the moment. He needed to prepare himself not to scream with her when the energy was ripped from her body.

 

_ “Hold on, love,” the Doctor thought to her desperately. _

 

_ “I love you,” she answered before the screams began. _

 

The Doctor gritted his teeth against the pain, tears streaming down his face, but he didn’t scream with her.  He couldn’t let the Master know about their bond. He couldn’t let Rose know that by tying their minds together like this, he would literally suffer with her.  She might not let him complete it if she knew. After an agonizing 10 minutes and 27 seconds, the pain stopped. The Doctor struggled to keep his breathing as normal as possible, though he could hear Rose gasping and sobbing.

 

“Well, that isn’t going to work.  What use are you if you can’t be used as a power source?” the Master huffed.  “I need some samples to work with.” 

 

He was purposely rough, but efficient in taking several vials of blood from Rose.  The Doctor hoped that would keep him busy for several hours with microscopes and whatnot, giving him plenty of time to complete what he had started.  He was horrified, however, when the Master left the room abruptly without removing the handcuffs that secured him on the other side of the room.

 

_ “Doctor?” Rose called to him, her mental voice sounding small and pained. _

 

_ “Oh, Rose.  I can’t get to you just now, he’s left me handcuffed,” the Doctor told her. _

 

“Oi, could one of you release me now? I have to take care of her,” he called to the guards.

 

They looked at each other for a moment and shook their heads.  The lights in the room were turned off for the night and the pair left the room.  Moonlight streaked through the windows, but there was no sign that there would be anyone coming back to release either of them anytime soon.

 

_ “I’m sorry,” the Doctor thought to her as he slumped on the floor. _

 

_ “What in the world are you sorry about now?” she sighed. _

 

_ “It’s my fault that he came here and he’s doing all of this to you just to hurt me.” _

 

_ “Doctor, you can’t take responsibility for other people’s actions.  You aren’t the one hurting me. You are trying to protect me and stop him from continuing with his plans.  There’s nothing that you need to apologize for. Now, since we seem to be stuck like this for a while, why don’t you explain what he’s done and what your plan is to fix this so that I can help too,” Rose suggested. _

 

_ “Yes, Rose.  I wanted to finish our bond tonight, but I need to be touching you for that.  We have to keep it hidden at least until it’s done or he might be able to break it.  It would quite likely drive us both mad, but he shouldn’t notice until he tries to break into our minds or he can see that we’re communicating telepathically,” he explained. _

 

It took most of the night for him to explain that he had been travelling with a woman named Martha and upon finding Jack, the three of them had ended up at the end of the universe when the TARDIS reacted poorly to Jack’s immortality.  He told her about Professor Yana and how he was really the Master, but hidden by a chameleon arch so that even he didn’t know he was a Time Lord. Once released, the Master stole the TARDIS and the Doctor could only lock the coordinates back to Earth in this time period, so that he would at least know where to find him.  Eventually, he explained how the Master was using the Archangel network of satellites to control the population and his plan involved telepathically connecting himself to it. By having Martha on the ground and using the countdown that he knew the Master would use, he could get the whole world to think about him and boost the power of the network enough for him to break them all free and take control away from the Master.

 

_ “Can I help? I mean, if we’re connected now and you said that I was telepathic too, can we both connect ourselves to it?” Rose wondered. _

 

_ “I’m not entirely sure how it will work, but we’ll try.  I’d love for you to help,” he answered. “You’re tired, love.  Why don’t you try to get some sleep and you know I’ll be right beside you as soon as I can.” _

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take note of the warnings on this story this is where it all gets a bit graphic.

The next morning, the Doctor was only given a few minutes to feed Rose and clean her up from necessary bodily functions before the Master once again locked him away from interfering.  He fought being restrained of course, but a quick zap from the Master’s laser screwdriver forced him to comply. Feeling the Doctor’s pain, Rose admirably didn’t draw attention to herself, but her eyes met his with the sudden realization that he had been feeling all of hers as well.

 

The Master spent the next hours testing what precisely triggered Rose’s regenerative powers.  Was it pain, being near death, or Rose’s belief that she was near death? This of course meant nearly killing her multiple times.  As painfully as possible, without any pain, and without her being able to see what was being done to her. It seemed to be connected to the severity of her injuries, whether she was aware of them or not, therefore completely out of her own control.  Having come to that conclusion, the Master decided to take a break from torturing them and left to deal with other concerns of world domination.

 

Thankfully, the Doctor was released from his handcuffs and allowed to take care of Rose for the time being.  She was still unconscious from the last experiment, but he carefully cleaned her and knelt beside the table where she was restrained.  He stroked her face lovingly as he worked on completing the bond between them.

 

It would only be a matter of time before the Master moved on from his physical tortures to trying to invade her mind and he needed to make sure that she was protected.  He was still contemplating a way to get Rose off of the ship and to safety before the Master decided that she was no longer interesting enough to keep around and killed her for good.  The question being, if he did get her off of the Valiant, would she end up back in the other universe when time reversed and would she still make it back after that?

 

_ “Doctor?”  _ Rose mumbled mentally as she started to wake.

 

_ “I’m here, love,”  _ he responded.

 

_ “You feel it too. All of it.” _

 

_ “Yeah,”  _ he admitted.

 

_ “Did you know that would happen?”  _ she wondered.

 

_ “Yes.  I’ll try not to get myself hurt again.  You’re going through enough already,”  _ he assured her.

 

_ “You’re going through it too.  How are you hiding it from him? God, it hurts so much, how are you not screaming with me?” _

 

_ “Knowing that if I did, he would find out about the bond and keep me from completing it before you were safe was a pretty big incentive.  He expects me to cry from watching you in pain, and I don’t think that I could prevent that even if I didn’t feel it with you.” _

 

_ “Is the bond complete now?  I don’t feel you doing the same thing you were doing before,”  _ she questioned.

 

_ “Yeah, it’s done.  I still want to hide it as long as possible from him though or he may try to use it against us.  But he won’t be able to invade our minds and our thoughts at least,”  _ the Doctor told her.

 

_ “Thank you,”  _ she told him, adding, _ “husband,”  _ with a smirk.

 

The Doctor smiled at her and leaned in to kiss her chapped lips.  _  “You are very welcome, my lovely wife.” _

 

There was a mock kissing noise from the direction of the door and the couple looked to find the Master watching them.  With an evil grin, he strolled over to Rose’s side and twirled his laser screwdriver in his fingers.

 

“On to our next experiments of the day.  The goal, to determine whether you can replace lost body parts,” he announced, earning looks of horror from Rose and the Doctor.  “Oh we’ll start small of course. No sense cutting off a leg if you can’t even regenerate a finger, but this should be quite interesting.”

 

By the end of the day, Rose’s hair was roughly cut short, not restoring itself with the rest of her body, but the Master had established that she could restore anything up to a full limb.  He didn’t go any further than that at this point, not wanting to damage her beyond the point where he could still experiment on her just yet. At least he had stopped for now, going to bed with his brainwashed human ‘wife’ for the night.

 

The Doctor was released, still gasping with tears from the last experiment.  He couldn’t stop himself from crawling across the room to Rose and climbing on top of her naked body.  There was nothing sexual about it, only the need to be near her, sheltering her while he could. He cried silently into her soft skin, his hearts breaking with everything that she was going through, and still blaming himself for her being in this position to begin with, despite her assurances that he couldn’t take responsibility for other people’s actions.  He whispered her name softly as he ran his fingers through what was left of her hair.

 

How would they survive for eleven more months when it was already this bad after two days of her being here? Even without the Master breaking into their minds, would they both go insane from their trauma?  If he could get her off the ship and she ended up back in the other universe, at least she would forget all of this, even if she didn’t make it back again. Even if their telepathic bond never existed for her, she would be his wife in his hearts for eternity.

 

He had been studying the restraints that held her, but the only way to release them was with the Master’s screwdriver.  He would have to have a plan to get her out of there quickly once released, if he could get his hands on the damned thing.

 

***********

 

The next day, the Master did nothing to Rose other than monitor the energy levels in her system.  He didn’t say a single word to either of them, knowing that the stress of wondering when the next experiment would happen was almost as bad as going through it.  The Doctor guessed that he was likely waiting to see just how long it took for all of the levels to return to their maximum before draining her again.

 

Knowing full well that it could all start again at any time, they took advantage of the time they had to work on plans.  The Doctor showed Rose how to connect with the Archangel network the way he was doing. By working on it together, they hoped that the connection would be even stronger than if he had done it alone.  It also gave Rose something to focus on other than what was being done to her. She had the confidence that she was doing something to fight back against the monster.

 

_ “I can hear you planning it, you know.  You think it’s hidden in the background, but I can hear your plans to send me away,”  _ Rose told him angrily.

 

_ “You know that I want nothing more than to keep you right beside me forever, Rose.  But he will kill you. You aren’t like Jack, you won’t just keep coming back the way he does,” _ the Doctor answered.

 

_ “You don’t know that.  Just because my presence doesn’t feel the same doesn’t mean that my life isn’t somehow tied to yours or the TARDIS or whatever.  And I won’t leave you here alone. What’s to say that he won’t kill you just for the attempt? Then I’d be here alone, without you or the protection of your mind.  I just have to keep his interest until this is over.” _

 

_ “From everything that he’s determined from his experiments in only a couple of days, how exactly do you expect him to stay interested for another eleven months, Rose?” _

 

_ “I don’t know, Doctor.  All I know is that I was ready to die trying to save you from the Daleks on the Game Station, I was ready to die falling with you into a black hole, I was ready to die throwing myself across the void just to find you again.  Now I’ve found you, I love you, we have this amazing connection between us and I’m not leaving you here,”  _ she insisted with tears in her eyes.

 

They talked late into the night, both snoozing from time to time, but were wide awake when the guards brought food for them in the morning.

 

“Well, this is an interesting little development,” the Master chuckled as he strolled into the room.

 

“What now?” Rose groaned.

 

“The scans of your blood didn’t exactly give me what I was looking for, but I did happen to find a little quirk that will make tormenting our dear Doctor so much more delicious,” he replied. “You, in all your Bad Wolfy glory, decided to prepare yourself to have little Time Lord babies in your future.  Now isn’t that tempting?”

 

“Don’t you dare,” the Doctor growled.

 

“Oh Doctor, which particular option am I being forbidden from enacting this time?” the Master chuckled.

 

“I’m sure any of them would be loathsome.”

 

“Well, you see, since I have a human wife, I’ve tried the whole sex thing.  To be honest, while pleasantly distracting, I don’t see what the humans think is so great about it.  I had considered just letting all the humans on board to have their way with your little pet whenever they wanted.  Let you watch as they repeatedly defiled her, and let you clean up the mess after. I’m sure that would be miserable for you both, but I’d rather be more directly and personally involved in your pain,” he told them.

 

The Doctor was glad that he’d decided against that particular option, but knew that what was coming would certainly be worse.  As he continued with his little speech, the Master dragged him across the room to be restrained away from Rose once more.

 

“This new discovery of her compatibility with Time Lords provides me with other options, however.  I could impregnate her with your genetic material and proceed to take your child from you to experiment on and torture.  But, that would give you hope that you could escape and become a happy little family somewhere, safe and sound. So, I’ve devised a new experiment.  To see if combining sex with torture gives me the satisfaction that I seem to be lacking in my marital bed. And if that fails to prove true, I can always use surgical methods to ensure that she ends up carrying my child rather than yours,” the Master explained with a sinister grin.

 

_ “It means he won’t kill me,”  _ Rose thought to him.  He could feel how disgusted she was by the thought of carrying the Master’s child, but saw it at least as the chance to remain interesting enough to keep alive for the rest of the year that they needed.

 

“The thing that you wanted with her so much, but never dared to do.  You get to watch me take it from her. Over and over again,” he announced casually as he adjusted the table where Rose was restrained.  It was suddenly more like that of a gynecological exam, with her legs spread wide, restrained in stirrups, and the table beneath her shortened to stop at the same point as her bottom.

 

_ “I’m so sorry, Rose.  Sorry that I never had the courage before.  Sorry that he is doing this to you just to hurt me,” _ the Doctor thought to her desperately.

 

_ “Doctor, stop,”  _ she interrupted. _  “This isn’t your fault.  We will get out of here and we will have loving, intimate moments all our own someday.  We will leave all of this behind us and move on. I’m not going to enjoy this, you can be sure of that.  But is it really worse than when he was cutting off my leg?” _

 

Tears streamed down both of their faces as they gazed at each other across the bridge of the Valiant.  The Master grabbed the electrodes he had used previously to inflict the most non-lethal pain to her previously and used them on her most sensitive areas as he pressed a hand against his trousers, clearly finding her pain to be his own pleasure.  Before long, he unzipped his trousers and stroked his erection as he continued making Rose writhe in agony in front of him. When it was clear that he was close, the Master thrust himself deeply inside of her and pressed the electrodes firmly into her underarms, holding them there longer than ever before as he fucked her harshly.  Only when he had finished releasing himself into her, did he finally pull them away from her sensitive flesh.

 

He placed the equipment back in its place, tucked himself back into this trousers, and released the Doctor’s handcuffs using his laser screwdriver over his shoulder as he left the room.

 

The Doctor collapsed onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably along with his love.


	4. Chapter 4

The days went by slowly. With the goal of getting Rose pregnant, most of the experiments stopped.  The Master would scan her occasionally to check whether he had achieved that goal or not, then proceeded to inflict as much pain as possible as he raped her.

 

The couple did their best to block out those moments for the time being.  They focused instead on talking with each other about the parts of their lives that they'd missed while apart, and connecting to the Archangel network.  So far, the Master hadn't seemed to notice their telepathic bond. They were thankful for that and neither questioned it, lest the madman suddenly change his mind about telepathically attacking Rose.

 

She had been there for three weeks, four days, and six hours when the Doctor saw them bringing in the pieces of what looked like a large cage.  Once assembled, it made a cube, two metres on each side.

 

_ “What do you suppose that's for?” Rose asked him silently. “To keep you in rather than the handcuffs?” _

 

_ “No, I have a feeling it might be for you,” he replied. _

 

_ “Well, at least I'd be able to move around.” _

 

_ “That will probably be difficult for you after so long being immobilized,” he told her. _

 

“I'm sure you're both just itching to know what it's for,” the Master said as he strolled into the room, a wide grin on his face that only made the Doctor worried. He waited for one of them to ask the obvious question, but they both stayed silent, prolonging the inevitable and irritating their captor. “No? You used to be so curious, Doctor. You always needed to know everything. Now you're just boring.”

 

“No doubt it's intended to hurt Rose, so I want nothing to do with it,” the Doctor informed him.

 

“Hurt her?!” the Master gasped. “Why no, of course not! She is to be the mother of my child,” he insisted as if he hadn't been torturing her nearly everyday since her arrival.

 

“I'm sure it isn't for her comfort,” the Doctor countered.

 

“I thought we would take a little break from the usual experiment, and go back to studying the thing that I've been curious about since she got here. The rather primitive little dimension jumper that she was using. I'd like to see just what it does to her physiology. You see, a human using it would likely be dead after a half dozen jumps, but I'm willing to bet it took far more than that to find the right universe,” he explained.

 

“So you're sending me back?” Rose questioned, knowing he had no real intention of releasing her.

 

“No, of course not.  The damage is the same, whether you cross the void or not.  I can teleport you within the cage and monitor the results without having to worry about losing my test subject.”

 

_ “Does it hurt when you use it?” The Doctor asked her silently. _

 

_ “Not really.  It's a bit disorienting, but unless he's done something to it other than changing the coordinates to keep me here, it shouldn't have much effect at all,” she replied. _

 

“Of course, the easiest way to move you would be unconscious, and I know just how I want to accomplish that,” the Master said with a smirk. A nod to the guards had them moving to restrain the Doctor in his usual place while the Master took out the set of various sized scalpels that he hadn't used on her since he had stopped testing her regenerative powers.

 

The Doctor could feel her fear at that pain coming back again and tried to send her soothing thoughts as best he could. He didn't relish the return of feeling like he was on the verge of regenerating as he felt the pain with her, but had to do his best to support her.  Somehow, he knew they would get out of this. The Doctor was surprised when he saw the Master palming himself through his trousers. He only did that before raping her, and he had always said that he wasn't sure what her energy discharge would do to any seed left inside her, so hadn't hurt her that badly while trying to get her pregnant.

 

“I'm afraid you've conditioned me a bit, Rose. The very thought of you screaming gets me hard now.  So, I might as well use this as a chance to test some other questions,” he said with an evil grin.

 

The Doctor wound his mind around hers tightly as the first cuts to her flesh were made.  They were both crying by the time the Master spit on her for some lubrication before forcing himself into her. He fucked her slowly this time, revelling in watching her writhing, bloody body try to pull away from him.  The Doctor watched as the lunatic carved his name into her flesh and tried to ignore the sight of the guards nearby touching themselves through their clothes.

 

As soon as the Master came inside of her, he pulled out and sliced her wrist, the blood loss triggering the Bad Wolf powers once again and healing her, but leaving her unconscious on the table.  The Master tucked himself away and began his scans to see what the energy may have done to the semen left behind.

 

The Doctor was breathing heavily as he sobbed for his precious Rose.  It was only slightly surprising that her restraints were released before the Master ordered him to clean her up and move her into the cage.  The Doctor wasn't sure he was strong enough to move her in his aged state, but wasn't going to protest the chance to hold her and keep the guards’ hands away from her.  He knew that there had been a few sores on Rose’s back earlier, but they were cleared away from her skin at the same time as the dozens of slices had been healed.

 

It was much easier to wash all of her skin and rinse her hair with her free from the table, but it took everything he had left to carry her into the cage nearby.  There was no bed or anything, so he had taken a moment to retrieve his own small blanket and laid it on the floor before moving her. The Master hadn’t protested, just seemed slightly amused by the gesture as he watched his oldest foe struggle with the task.  The Doctor placed a gentle kiss to her forehead before allowing himself to be pulled from the cage and the door locked.

 

The Master didn't bother to restrain the Doctor again as he scanned Rose once again to have a proper comparison for his next experiment. The Doctor sat on the floor next to the cage, unable to reach her, but needing to be as close as possible.  It was nearly an hour later that her eyes fluttered open to meet his. They gave each other a sad smile before the Master noticed that she was awake.

 

With a flash of light, Rose disappeared before his eyes.  The Doctor looked back at the Master, but found him pounding on the machine in front of him and cursing.

 

“Where the hell?” he grumbled.

 

“I thought you were just moving her inside the cage?” the Doctor questioned, knowing that something hadn't worked to his plans.  He could still feel Rose in his mind, elated that she was not only safe and unharmed, but also away from this monster.

 

_ “Where are you, love?” he asked her. _

 

_ “Inside the TARDIS. How did I get here?” Rose replied. _

 

_ “He tried to teleport you within the cage, but the TARDIS must have intercepted the signal.  Stay there and hide,” he told her. _

 

“Why aren't you worried?” the Master asked, suspicious of the Doctor's calm demeanour at her disappearance.

 

“She's away from you,” he answered.

 

“She could be dead. Scattered into a million pieces, materialized hundreds of feet in the air and splattered on the ground, but you don't seem the least bit concerned.  And I think I know why,” he growled as he lunged towards the Doctor. His fingers pressed to his temples as he tried to enter his mind, seeking the knowledge of where his prisoner was located.

 

The Doctor braced himself instinctively for the attack, but it never came as his bond with Rose blocked any possibility of intrusion. He passed along what was happening to Rose along with his joy that she was finally safe and their plan to protect each other's minds had worked.

 

“What did you do? Where is she?!” the Master roared.

 

“She's safe,” he responded with a smile.

 

The Master recoiled from him in disgust. “You bonded with that creature?! That's just, ugh!”

 

“Says the man who's been having sex with my wife for weeks,” he snarled back.

 

“You felt all of it,” the Master realized with a smirk. “And so will she!”

 

With that, the Doctor was thrown into the cage and left alone while the Master planned his next course of action.

 

_ “Are you alright? Doctor?” Rose asked. _

 

_ “I’m fine.  He’s locked me up in the cage and he knows about our bond now.  He might use it to hurt both of us, but at least you’re safe now.  Please stay on the TARDIS, and don’t go into the console room. I don’t want him to find you in there,” the Doctor insisted. _

 

_ “But, Doctor, I could destroy the paradox machine now! We wouldn’t have to wait a year to reverse it,” Rose argued. _

 

_ “He can still access that room.  The TARDIS can’t keep him out of there, but she can lock away the other rooms from him and he won’t even know they’re there.  You’ll be safe there. I need you safe, love, please.” _

 

_ “I’m heading to the medbay to run a full scan on myself.  She can check me over and let me know if there’s anything that needs fixing, yeah?”  she asked, not promising to keep out of trouble if it might save him. _

 

_ “Yes, she’ll help you as much as she can.  She’s weak from what he’s done to her, but she sacrificed a lot to get you out of here, so I’m sure she’ll do everything she can to protect you,” he assured her. _

 

The Doctor sat impatiently in his cage.  He had received word from Rose that she seemed to be healthy enough considering all she had been through. The TARDIS had given her a vitamin injection as well as a large meal, but since then, all he had felt was Rose’s frustration and the ship’s reassurance. He couldn't be sure, but he thought that the TARDIS might be hiding the console room from her for her own safety and he was immensely grateful for that.

 

-/-/-/-/-

 

The Doctor gasped for breath when the electrical shocks finally ceased.  The Master couldn't kill him repeatedly the way he could with Jack or Rose, but he could inflict intense amounts of pain, knowing that Rose would feel it as well. The Doctor was sure that he was trying to get Rose to reveal herself in some kind of rescue attempt, and she likely would have, but the TARDIS was keeping her safely inside and away from the console room.  He could feel that she was crying along with him after this latest session. She tried to send him soothing thoughts through their bond, but there wasn't really anything either of them could do about the pain.

 

_ “I have to do something, Doctor. Please, can you convince her to let me out? I can sneak out at night and release you. We could fix everything then,” she thought to him desperately. _

 

_ “No. He doesn't know you're on the ship, but there are far too many guards around here, you know that. And they'd all recognize you in an instant.  She's keeping you safe for a reason, love. The TARDIS knows more about the future than any of us and she'll let you help when the time is right.” _

 

He was sure that Rose’s connection to his ship would be important in fixing all of this, but for now, he was just thankful that she was away from the monster that used to be his friend.  There would be no forgiveness anymore. Not after all he had done to Rose. She had sacrificed everything to give him a bright and shining future, and the Master had tried to destroy her just to cause him pain.

 

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

 

Rose sat alone in the kitchen on the TARDIS, staring into her cold cup of tea.  She had spent days wandering the halls. She was convinced that there had to be a way to get to the console room and fix all of this.  But she had finally collapsed from exhaustion and curled up to cry on the floor. The last nail in the coffin of that plan was when the TARDIS herself moved the door to Rose’s bedroom right next to her.  It proved that the ship would never let her find the way out until she wanted to.

 

Now she brooded in the silence she’d been trapped in for weeks.  It could have been months, but she had no way of really knowing without asking the Doctor.  There was no real day or night on the TARDIS and she wasn’t counting the days anyway. Every once in a while, she thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.  She would alternately try to hide herself from the Master, in case he had found a way into the rest of the ship, or run shouting down the hallway for the Doctor to come back.  Both cases, she knew, weren’t real. It was just her own imagination playing tricks on her.

 

Rose felt like she was in hell.  She hated to think of the TARDIS that way, but at least in the other universe, she had her family and hope.  Here she was alone, trapped, constantly being tortured with pain through her connection with the Doctor. She should adore that closeness with him.  It should be a reverent link between soulmates. She wanted to cherish it. It was her only connection to him now, and at least he could talk with her through it.  But it was also the source of both of their continued pain. The Master likely wouldn’t bother physically torturing the Doctor if it weren’t for their bond. It made her feel guilty for begging him to make the connection in the first place.  After all, their tormentor hadn’t even tried to enter her mind while he had access to her.

 

She could feel the Doctor’s tension increase and knew that the pain would start again soon.  She tried to brace herself against it, but there was no escape. The tears started to fall before the first cuts had even been made.

 

_ “I’m sorry, Doctor.  I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault,” she thought to him. _

 

She felt his confusion, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to have a conversation at the moment and they both only embraced each other’s minds closely through the next hours of pain.

 

-/-/-/-/-/-

 

He could tell Rose was as physically recovered from the ordeal as she could be in the given circumstances, but after months of being alone on a sentient time ship, with only his mental conversations with her, she was going to need time to recover from the isolation as well.  They would have time, he was sure. Centuries together to heal, and laugh, and have a family once all of this was over. He sent her images of them together and happy, thoughts of her pregnant with their child, and snuggling by the fire in the library. Rose sent back an image of half a dozen miniature versions of himself jumping around in little brown suits and converse sneakers.  He couldn't help but smile at that.

 

“Where is she?” The Master demanded.

 

“Where you'll never reach her,” was his standard reply.

 

“For how long? I've won. This planet is mine, and soon the planets beyond.  How long is she going to hide away? Until you're dead?”

 

“You'll never touch her again,” he insisted.

 

-/-/-/-

 

He could hear Lucy’s screams at night. It seemed the Master had indeed developed quite a preference for violence during sex and his poor human wife was now paying the price. The cuts and bruises were becoming more and more obvious as she wandered listlessly through the Valiant.  She didn't even glare at the Doctor anymore, having given up on everything now. He wished there was something he could do to help her, but even when the year had been reversed, she was likely to be one of the few that would remember it all.

 

_ “Could we take her somewhere for therapy or something?” Rose questioned, feeling his sorrow. _

 

_ “We could try, but I doubt she will have any trust in either of us or any aliens after all of this,” he replied. _

 

_ “Is there a way we could make her forget too? Even if the actual year isn't undone for her physically?” she suggested. _

 

_ “Maybe. I'll have to look into a few things.  You should get some rest, love,” he told her. _

 

_ “Seems like all I've been doing is resting for months.  I need to get out of here and do something! I can help fix this, Doctor. I can't just sit here while the world burns just because you want me safe!” she argued. _

 

_ “It wasn't my decision. It's the TARDIS, you know that.” _

 

_ “But you're not trying to change her mind.” _

 

_ “It's almost time, Rose.  You and I are almost completely in sync with the Archangel network now.  As soon as he counts down to launching his rockets, Martha will find a way back up here and get everyone in the world focusing on me. That much psychic energy will break through his control long enough for me to take over and then we can break the paradox machine.” _

 

_ “What do I do, then? Will she let me help?” Rose asked. _

 

_ “I'm sure she will. At the right time, she'll let you into the console room and tell you which parts to disconnect or break.  She's been talking to you, yeah?” _

 

_ “Well, not exactly talking, but she sends me pictures and stuff,” she sighed. _

 

_ “Just a few more weeks. Then we'll go find a beautiful deserted beach somewhere and I'll show you just how much I love you. Like I should have done years ago, but never had the courage.” _

 

_ “I love you too, Doctor.” _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for reading this and your amazing comments... I might even have the confidence to try writing the idea I have for a Rose/MetaCrisis/Kilgrave story now... we'll see.

“Tomorrow, they launch. We're opening up a rift in the Braccatolian space. They won't see us coming. It kind of scary,” the Master told him casually as he pressed the branding iron into the Doctor’s back again, causing him to cry out and take deep breaths through his teeth.

 

“Then stop,” he gasped.

 

“Once the Empire is established, and there's a new Gallifrey in the heavens, with your little wife bearing me new Time Lord babies, maybe then it stops. The drumming. The never ending drumbeat. Ever since I was a child. I looked into the vortex. That's when it chose me. The drumming, the call to war. Can't you hear it? Listen, it's there now. Right now. Tell me you can hear it, Doctor. Tell me,” the Master insisted.

 

“It's only you,” the Doctor replied.

 

“Good.”

 

He was left alone, chained to the sides of the cage so that he could be tortured whenever the Master felt like it.  He would occasionally still kill Jack for the fun of it, but knowing that inflicting pain on the Doctor would also hurt Rose meant that he would prefer that passtime.  The Doctor knew that there were soldiers searching the entire planet, listening for her screams as she endured his pain, but he found a measure of solace in the knowledge that they would never find her.

 

The next day, Martha was marched onto the bridge of the Valiant.  The Doctor was still in his cage, though he had been released from the restraints so that he could get a good view of the Master’s little performance.  He had the television cameras set up to broadcast his announcement to the planet below. Martha was forced to kneel in front of the Master, her family standing nearby along with Jack, who was still in handcuffs.

 

“Citizens of Earth, rejoice and observe. Your teleport device, in case you thought I'd forgotten,” he prompted and Martha tossed the vortex manipulator to him.

 

“Down below, the fleet is ready to launch. Two hundred thousand ships set to burn across the universe. Are we ready?” he asked.

 

“The fleet awaits your signal. Rejoice!” one of his men informed him.

 

“Three minutes to align the black hole converters. Counting down. I never could resist a ticking clock. My children, are you ready?”

 

“We will fly and blaze and slice. We will fly and blaze and slice,” the monstrous spheres chanted over the speakers.

 

“At zero, to mark this day, the child Martha Jones, will die. Any last words? No? Such a disappointment, this one. Days of old, Doctor, you had companions who could absorb the time vortex and become immortal goddesses. This one's useless. Bow your head. And so it falls to me, as Master of all, to establish from this day, a new order of Time Lords. From this day forward,” he announced, pointing his laser screwdriver at her, but was interrupted by Martha’s laughter.  “What. What's so funny?”

 

“A gun,” Martha said.

 

“What about it?” he asked.

 

“A gun in four parts?” 

 

“Yes, and I destroyed it.”

 

“A gun in four parts scattered across the world? I mean, come on, did you really believe that?” she questioned incredulously.

 

“What do you mean?” he wondered.

 

“As if I would ask her to kill,” the Doctor countered.

 

“Oh well, it doesn't matter. I've got her exactly where I want her and soon enough I’ll find your other little freak and destroy her as well,” the Master shouted angrily.

 

“But I knew what Professor Docherty would do. The Resistance knew about her son. I told her about the gun, so she'd get me here at the right time,” Martha told him.

 

“Oh, but you're still going to die.”

 

“Don't you want to know what I was doing, travelling the world?” Martha prompted.

 

“Tell me,” the Master said, rolling his eyes but keeping his weapon pointed at her.

 

“I told a story, that's all. No weapons, just words. I did just what the Doctor said. I went across the continents all on my own. And everywhere I went, I found the people, and I told them my story. I told them about the Doctor. And I told them to pass it on, to spread the word so that everyone would know about the Doctor,” she explained.

 

“Faith and hope? Is that all? Because I can guarantee there was plenty of that while I was sawing off his little pet’s leg for the fun of it,” he taunted.

 

_ “It’s time, love.  Focus on the network, the way we have been,” the Doctor thought to Rose. _

 

“No, that’s not all because I gave them an instruction, just as the Doctor said. I told them that if everyone thinks of one word, at one specific time,” Martha told him, gaining the confidence to stand up and face him.

 

“Nothing will happen. Is that your weapon? Prayer?”

 

“Right across the world, one word, just one thought at one moment but with fifteen satellites,” Martha finally revealed.

 

“What?” the Master gasped as he realized just how the Doctor’s plan would work.

 

“The Archangel Network,” Jack said, suddenly smiling at the Doctor.

 

“A telepathic field binding the whole human race together, with all of them, every single person on Earth, thinking the same thing at the same time. And that word is Doctor,” Martha concluded.

 

At the end of the countdown, the Doctor could feel the energy flowing through him from the Archangel network, connecting him not only to Rose and her Bad Wolf energy, but to the telepathic energy of the entire human race.  It created a gentle glow all around him and he found that he could control it, making the cage around him disappear.

 

“Stop it. No, no, no, no, you don't,” the Master argued.

 

Jack, Martha, and her family were all saying his chosen name over and over along with the people of Earth.  Even Lucy joined in to stop the man who had manipulated and abused her.

 

“I've had a whole year to tune myself into the psychic network and integrate with its matrices.  Add to that my connection with Rose and her newfound abilities,” the Doctor said as he approached the Master.

 

“I order you to stop!” the Master shouted at everyone in the room.

 

“The one thing you can't do. Stop them thinking. Tell me the human race is degenerate now, when they can do this,” the Doctor continued.

 

“No!” the Master said as he tried to fire his laser at the Doctor.  The energy field surrounding him repelled the beam effortlessly.

 

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that it had to end like this,” the Doctor told him.

 

“Then I'll kill them,” the Master threatened as he turned on Martha and her family, but the Doctor used the energy to toss the weapon aside. “You can't do this. You can't do it. It's not fair!”

 

“You brought this on yourself,” the Doctor said, knowing that vengeance was not something he usually believed in.

 

“No! No! No! No!” the Master cried.

 

“You wouldn't listen, as you tortured her endlessly.  You used her simply because she meant the universe to me.  I used to have so much mercy,” the Doctor told him.

 

“Doctor, where is Rose?” Jack interrupted, seeing the darkness looming over his friend.

 

“She is safe.  Safe from him torturing her, experimenting on her, repeatedly bringing her to brink of death before she healed herself, and safe from him raping her in the hopes of defiling the precious gift that she meant for me so that she could carry our children in the future.  And I will keep her safe from you ever harming her again,” the Doctor answered, his voice becoming more and more vicious as he glared at the Master.

 

“No!” the Master shouted as he activated the vortex manipulator in his hands.

 

“Not this time,” the Doctor growled as he ran toward the ship’s controls to find a way to scan for the Master’s whereabouts.

 

_ “He’s here,” Rose thought to him, with a wave of reassurance from the TARDIS. _

 

“No!” the Doctor shouted and ran towards his ship, Jack following close behind him.

 

Around them, the threatening spheres of the Toclafane began to wink out of existence.  The paradox was broken, but the Doctor couldn’t allow Rose to be threatened by the Master again.  The door of the TARDIS flew open as they approached to reveal a console completely free of the mechanisms that had been there for the paradox machine, Rose glowing gold with Bad Wolf energy, and the Master floating harmlessly in the air in front of her.

 

“Rose!” the Doctor shouted, stopping in his tracks just before he touched her, unsure of what would happen while she was like this.

 

“He cannot be permitted to roam free,” she said, her voice as ethereal as it had been on the Game Station.

  
“I know.  I’ll never let him hurt you again, love,” he assured her.

 

“You cannot stop him.  He will be banished to a pocket universe where he can do no harm, but live out his life alone,” she decreed and in a flash of golden light, the Master disappeared.

 

Rose collapsed onto the grating with a gasp and the energy that had been surrounding her faded away.  The Doctor ran to her side and picked her up off of the floor. She curled into his embrace and whispered his name happily.

 

“What the hell just happened?” Jack questioned.

 

The Doctor carried Rose back to the bridge of the ship to make sure that everyone was alright.  She cringed at being back in that place and clung to his neck tightly. He kissed her forehead and kept her protectively in his arms as he explained to everyone on board just what was going on.

 

“The paradox is broken. We've reverted back, one year and one day. Two minutes past eight in the morning,” the Doctor told them.

 

They could hear someone on the radio, “This is UNIT Central. What's happened up there? We just saw the President assassinated.”

 

“Just after the President was killed, but just before the spheres arrived. Everything back to normal. Planet Earth restored. None of it happened. The rockets, the terror. It never was,” he continued.

 

“What about the spheres?” Martha asked, looking confusedly at the blonde woman in his arms.

 

“Trapped at the end of the universe,” he assured them.

 

“But I can remember it,” Francine argued.  “All of us here still remember what he did.”

 

“We're at the eye of the storm. The only ones who'll ever know,” the Doctor replied.

 

“And we will have a very difficult time dealing with all of that,” Rose said.  “But he’s gone. He has been sent where he cannot hurt anyone ever again. Trapped alone, in a pocket universe.”

 

“How?” Martha asked.

 

“I’ll explain later,” the Doctor responded. “Maybe.”

 

Everyone stared blankly for a moment as they considered where to go from here.  The world would remember what Harold Saxon had done in the time before the Doctor had followed him from the end of the universe, but not the horror of the past year.  They were startled from their contemplation by the sound of a gun shot.

 

“Lucy!” Rose cried and got down from the Doctor’s arms to run over to her.

 

The woman lay on the floor, having shot herself in the head with a gun, stolen from one of the guards.  The pool of blood forming beneath her matched the colour of the revealing, red dress she was wearing. Her pale skin was marked with bruises and scars, but her face seemed almost happy, despite the blank stare of death.

 

“Poor Lucy.  I wanted to help her,” Rose cried.

 

“I know, Rose. He can’t hurt her anymore either,” the Doctor said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders again and letting her cry into his jacket.

 

-/-/-/-/-/-/-

 

It took some time to explain who Rose was and how she had gotten there to Martha and her family.  Jack was just as happy to have her back as the Doctor was. They had become like family when they were travelling together and despite the time he had spent waiting, he still looked on her like a little sister.  Martha decided that it was time for her to stop travelling and return to her life on Earth. She could take care of her family, after their horrific time on the Valiant, and continue her studies to pass her exams.

 

The Doctor fulfilled his promise of taking Rose to an uninhabited planet, with beautiful beaches, where they could spend as long as they wanted.  It took some time before their relationship turned physical. They had both been through so much pain, that it was better to give themselves time to heal.  It was months before they returned to Earth. They had gotten married in a more traditional way by human standards and Rose wanted to share the news with Jack.

 

“I’m so happy for the two of you,” he said as he hugged them both.  “I always knew you were meant to be together.”

 

“I know, you told me,” Rose laughed.

 

“He told me too,” the Doctor added, rolling his eyes.

 

“I know a sure thing when I see it.  As soon as I heard about the Time Agency, when I was young, I knew it would be big.  I was the first kid from the Boeshane Peninsula to make it. They were all so proud, they put me up on posters! The Face of Boe, they used to call me,” Jack told them.

 

“You- what?!” Rose gasped.

 

“Pretty cool, huh?  Anyway, I gotta get back to my team.  Don’t be a stranger, Rosie!” he called as he jogged back to the Torchwood Hub.

 

“What did I do?” Rose questioned, her eyes filling with tears.  The Doctor could feel her spiraling as she thought about what the Master had said about her sentencing Jack to dying over and over.

 

“Stop,” the Doctor told her, grasping her arms and moving in front of her to look directly into her eyes.  “You know that he doesn’t blame you. Jack is a very dear friend and you wanted him to be alive. Your love and compassion is part of what makes you the most incredible woman that I’ve ever known.”

 

“But, five billion years, you said he died on New Earth, yeah?” Rose asked.

 

“Yes, but remember that he can time travel too with his vortex manipulator.  Tell you what, the Face of Boe was pretty famous in the future. Let’s go crash one of his parties and see if we can get a chance to talk to him for a bit,” the Doctor suggested.

 

“Alright, husband.  Lead the way,” she agreed, taking his arm.

 

As they worked together to dematerialize, there was a huge crash and the ship threw its passengers to the floor.  The wall near the ceiling was broken, where a ship seemed to have broken through and a life ring was lying on the floor nearby.  Upon closer inspection, it read Titanic in large, red letters.

 

“What?!” the Doctor shouted.


End file.
